Julius Nyerere | president of Tanzania | Britannica.com president of Tanzania Alternative Titles: Julius Kambarage Nyerere, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere Patrice Lumumba Julius Nyerere, in full Julius Kambarage Nyerere, also called Mwalimu (Swahili: “Teacher”) (born March 1922, Butiama, Tanganyika—died October 14, 1999, London , England ), first prime minister of independent Tanganyika (1961), who became the first president of the new state of Tanzania (1964). Nyerere was also the major force behind the Organization of African Unity (OAU; now the African Union ). Julius Nyerere, 1985. William F. Campbell—Time Life Pictures/Getty Images Nyerere was a son of the chief of the small Zanaki ethnic group. He was educated at Tabora Secondary School and Makerere College in Kampala , Uganda . A convert to Roman Catholicism, he taught in several Roman Catholic schools before going to Edinburgh University. He was the first Tanganyikan to study at a British university. He graduated with an M.A.

in history and economics in 1952 and returned to Tanganyika to teach. By the time Nyerere entered politics, the old League of Nations mandate that Britain had exercised in Tanganyika had been converted into a United Nations trusteeship, with independence the ultimate goal. Seeking to hasten the process of emancipation, Nyerere joined the Tanganyika African Association, quickly becoming its president in 1953. In 1954 he converted the organization into the politically oriented Tanganyika African National Union (TANU). Under Nyerere’s leadership the organization espoused peaceful change, social equality, and racial harmony and rejected tribalism and all forms of racial and ethnic discrimination . Julius Nyerere. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. In 1955 and 1956 he journeyed to the United Nations in New York City as a petitioner to the Trusteeship Council and the Fourth Committee on trusts and non-self-governing territories. After a debate that ended in his being granted a hearing, he asked for a target date for the independence of Tanganyika.

The British administration rejected the demand, but a dialogue was begun that established Nyerere as the preeminent nationalist spokesman for his country. The British administration nominated him a member of the Tanganyikan Legislative Council, but he resigned in 1957 in protest against the slowness of progress toward independence. In elections held in 1958–59, Nyerere and TANU won a large number of seats on the Legislative Council. In a subsequent election in August 1960, his organization managed to win 70 of 71 seats in Tanganyika’s new Legislative Assembly . Progress toward independence owed much to the understanding and mutual trust that developed during the course of negotiations between Nyerere and the British governor, Sir Richard Turnbull. Tanganyika finally gained responsible self-government in September 1960, and Nyerere became chief minister at this time. Tanganyika became independent on December 9, 1961, with Nyerere as its first prime minister. The next month, however, he resigned from this position to devote his time to writing and synthesizing his views of government and of African unity.

One of Nyerere’s more important works was a paper called “ Ujamaa—The Basis for African Socialism, ” which later served as the philosophical basis for the Arusha Declaration (1967). When Tanganyika became a republic in 1962, he was elected president, and in 1964 he became president of the United Republic of Tanzania (Tanganyika and Zanzibar). Tanganyika gaining independence, 1961. Stock footage courtesy The WPA Film Library Britannica Stories Ringling Bros. Folds Its Tent Nyerere was reelected president of Tanzania in 1965 and was returned to serve three more successive five-year terms before he resigned as president in 1985 and handed over his office to his successor, Ali Hassan Mwinyi. From independence on Nyerere also headed Tanzania’s only political party, Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM). As outlined in his political program, the Arusha Declaration, Nyerere was committed to the creation of an egalitarian socialist society based on cooperative agriculture in Tanzania.

He collectivized village farmlands, carried out mass literacy campaigns, and instituted free and universal education. He also emphasized Tanzania’s need to become economically self-sufficient rather than remain dependent on foreign aid and foreign investment. Nyerere termed his socialist experimentation ujamaa (Swahili: “familyhood”), a name that emphasized the blend of economic cooperation, racial and tribal harmony, and moralistic self-sacrifice that he sought to achieve. Tanzania became a one-party state, though certain democratic opportunities were permitted within that framework. Structures of Government: Fact or Fiction? As a major force behind the modern Pan-African movement and one of the founders in 1963 of the OAU, Nyerere was a key figure in African events in the 1970s. He was a strong advocate of economic and political measures in dealing with the apartheid policies of South Africa . Nyerere was chairman of a group of five frontline African presidents who advocated the overthrow of white supremacy in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), South Africa, and South West Africa/Namibia (now Namibia).

Britannica Lists & Quizzes Editor Picks: Exploring 10 Types of Basketball Movies Nyerere’s concerns on the domestic front were dominated by economic hardships and by difficulties between Nyerere and Idi Amin of Uganda . In 1972 Nyerere denounced Amin when the latter announced the expulsion of all Asians from Uganda. When Ugandan troops occupied a small border area of Tanzania in 1978, Nyerere pledged to bring about the downfall of Amin, and in 1979 the Tanzanian army invaded Uganda in support of a local movement to overthrow him. Nyerere’s intervention helped to unseat Amin and brought about the return to power in Uganda of Milton Obote in 1980. Though enthusiastically adopted by his countrymen and steadfastly supported by sympathetic western European nations, Nyerere’s socialist policies failed to spur economic development in Tanzania. At the time of his resignation in 1985, Tanzania was still one of the world’s poorest countries, with a per capita income of about U.S. $250. Agriculture remained at the subsistence level, and the country’s industrial and transportation infrastructures were chronically underdeveloped.

One-third of the national budget was supplied by foreign aid. Tanzania had one of the highest literacy rates in Africa, however, and the society was both politically stable and notably free of economic inequalities. Nyerere himself remained committed to socialist policies throughout his political career. Julius Nyerere, 1981. Hanos/Liaison Agency Nyerere continued as chairman of the CCM until 1990. Thereafter he assumed the role of elder statesman and was regularly called upon to act as arbiter in international crises such as those in Rwanda and Burundi . Soft-spoken, unpretentious, small of stature, and quick to laugh, Julius Nyerere was widely credited with impressive oratorical skills and unusual powers of political perception. His thoughts, essays, and speeches are collected in his books, Uhuru na Umoja (1967; Freedom and Unity), Uhuru na Ujamaa (1968; Freedom and Socialism), and Uhuru na Maendeleo (1973; Freedom and Development). He also translated two plays by William Shakespeare , The Merchant of Venice and Julius Caesar, into Swahili.

More about Julius Nyerere Former Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere dies | South African History Online South African History Online Home » Former Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere dies Former Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere dies nyerere_j.jpg Thursday, 14 October 1999 On 14 October 1999, the first president and father of Tanzanian independence Julius Mwalimu Nyerere died of leukaemia aged 77. Nyerere became a symbol of the struggle against colonialism in Tanzania and to other African countries including South Africa. His commitment to the liberation of Africa from White minority rule was demonstrated through allowing several liberation movements to have bases in Tanzania. For instance, the African National Congress (ANC), the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), the Frente de LibertaÁƒÂƒÂ§ÁƒÂƒ£o de MoÁƒÂƒÂ§ambique (FRELIMO) led by Samora Machel and the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU). In 1961, Nyerere joined other African leaders in denouncing the racist policies of the apartheid government in South Africa and declared that, if the apartheid regime remained in the Commonwealth, Tanzania would never join.

Nyerere also spoke out strongly against the British Prime Minster Harold Wilson's government for not taking military action against Ian Smith's Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in 1965. When the crisis in then Rhodesia worsened he mobilized and campaigned for majority rule through the frontline states (Tanzania, Zambia, Angola, Botswana and Mozambique). When the UK government considered the possibility of resuming limited arms sales to the apartheid government in South Africa, Nyerere expressed his concern. In 1975 the Tanzanian government donated a sisal farm of five thousand hectares of land to the ANC in Morogoro. The land was developed and the Solomon Mahlangu Freedom College (SAMFCO) was constructed. As the youth fled political persecution in South Africa many found their way into Tanzania and landed at SAMFCO. In 1992, the piece of land was handed back to the government of Tanzania.

In recognizing the role played by Nyerere and people of Tanzania in the struggle against apartheid, Nelson Mandela the president of South Africa in 1997 declared that: "The people of Tanzania gave unstinting support to the liberation of South Africa. They gave recognition of the most practical kind to the principle that our freedom and theirs were interdependent." References: • Anon (1999), Julius Nyerere , from the UK Guardian, 15 October 1999 [online] Available at: [Accessed 05 October 2010] Julius Nyerere, first president of Tanzania | African American Registry Julius Nyerere, first president of Tanzania Julius Nyerere Date: Thu, 1922-04-13 On this date, we observe the birth of Julius Kambarage Nyerere in 1922. He was the first president of Tanzania in 1964. Born the son of a minor chief in Butiama, in what was then British-ruled Tanganyika, Nyerere was educated as a teacher. He entered politics in 1954 and founded the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU).

He became the colony's chief minister when TANU won the elections of 1960 and the country became independent a year later. Nyerere continued as Prime Minister, until early in 1962 when he resigned to concentrate on restructuring TANU for its post independence role. In 1964, following a revolution on the Arab-dominated island of Zanzibar and a mutiny in his army, Nyerere formed a union of the two countries, with himself as president. Committed to African liberation, he offered sanctuary in Tanzania to members of the African National Congress and numerous other rebel groups from Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Angola, and Uganda. In 1978, under Nyerere's leadership, Tanzanian troops entered Uganda, deposing Dictator Idi Amin. A strong supporter of indigenous African culture, Nyerere promoted the use of Swahili, even translating the works of Shakespeare into his native tongue. Under his leadership Tanzania became the only country on the continent with a native African official language. He stepped down as president in 1985, but continued as head of the ruling party until 1990.

At the time of Nyerere's retirement from TANU party leadership, Tanzania faced major economic problems arising from his attempt to build an agrarian socialist economy. Nevertheless, the country maintained an expanding educational system and a strong sense of national unity unmarked by ethnic unrest. Still active in international politics, Nyerere’s style of governing emphasized ujamaa ("familyhood"), a unique form of rural socialism. Nyerere was addressed throughout Africa as Mwalimu, Swahili for "teacher.” He died in October 1999. Reference: The Encyclopedia Britannica, Fifteenth Edition. Copyright 1996 Encyclopedia Britannica Inc.

ISBN 0-85229-633-0 Julius Nyerere | News | The Guardian browse all sections close Julius Nyerere A giant of the African independence struggle, he retained his worldwide moral authority even after his vision of rural socialism faltered Thursday 14 October 1999 21.02 EDT First published on Thursday 14 October 1999 21.02 EDT Share on Messenger Close In his heyday as president of Tanzania - which he ruled from 1961 to 1985 - Julius Nyerere, who has died from leukaemia aged 77, was lion- ised by the liberal left of the world for his impassioned advocacy of his style of African socialism, but mauled by his critics as a priggish autocrat, whose idealism failed to deliver prosperity to his people. To his credit, Nyerere stepped down peacefully and voluntarily, long before it became fashionable for Africa's self-appointed life presidents to subject themselves to the verdict of their peoples in multi-party elections. In 1967 came Nyerere's Arusha Declaration, his policy on socialism and self-reliance.

Its cornerstone was ujamaa, or familyhood, which was imposed on Tanzania in the following years. The aim was to collect people into villages or communes, where they would have better access to education and medical services. Nearly 10m peasants were moved and a substantial majority were forced to give up their land. But to most Tanzanians, the idea of collective farming was abhorrent. Many found themselves worse off; incentive and productivity declined, and ujamaa was effectively abandoned. It was a measure of Nyerere's international prestige that the failure of this fundamental policy at home in no way dented his global standing. A man of austere and unostentatious personal habits, and instantly recognisable in his Mao tunic, Julius Nyerere was born at Butiama, on the eastern shore of Lake Victoria, into the small Zanaki tribe. He was 12 before he first went to school, but was immediately singled out for his lively intelligence by the Roman Catholic priests. After Makerere University, in Kampala, he taught for three years, admitting, later in life, that he was a schoolmaster by choice and a politician by accident.

In 1949 he became the first Tanzanian to study at a British university, when he went to Edinburgh on a government scholarship. And it was there, under the influence of post-war Fabian socialists, that he developed his own political ideas of grafting socialism on to African communal existence. Nyerere left teaching in 1954, formed the Tanganyika African National Union, and campaigned for the nationalist movement. He was elected to the then Tanganyika legislature in 1958, representing East Province, the first time that the country's Africans were enfranchised, and became leader of the opposition. He became chief minister in 1960. But it was not until 1961, when he was sworn in as prime minister of the newly-independent Tanganyika that he would be in a position to start putting the ideas into practice. In the same year, he joined other African leaders in denouncing the racist policies of South Africa and declaring that, if the apartheid regime remained in the Commonwealth, Tanzania would never join. South Africa subsequently withdrew its membership.

For Nyerere the move marked the beginning of an effective commitment to African liberation movements: later, he played host to the African National Congress (ANC) and the Pan- African Congress (PAC) of South Africa, to Samora Machel's Frelimo - battling against the Portuguese in Mozambique - and to Robert Mugabe's fledgling Zanla forces, which opposed colonial rule in the then Southern Rhodesia. He broke off relations with Britain, Tanzania's principal aid donor, after its failure to use force when Ian Smith declared UDI in 1965 - earning himself the description by Smith of the "evil genius" behind the ensuing guerrilla war. The unusually principled way in which Nyerere looked upon international politics was again evident in his uncompromising stand against the brutal regime of Idi Amin in Uganda in the late 1970s. Despite almost universal condemnation of the dictator's excesses, it was left to Tanzania to intervene militarily and dislodge Amin. A brief invasion of Tanzania by Amin in late 1978 brought a swift reponse from Nyerere: Tanzanian troops, joined by Ugandan exiles, were mobilised to drive back the invaders.

But they didn't stop at the border. Kampala fell in 1979, with its residents lining the streets chanting the name of the Tanzanian leader. It was the first time in African post-colonial history that one country had invaded another and captured its capital. It was a fundamental breach of the principles of the Organisation of African Unity. But Nyerere weathered the storm. However, the campaign proved expensive, and while their leader devoted such resources, time and energy to foreign affairs, his critics in Tanzania argued that he overlooked domestic problems, and failed to apply the same observance of human right abuses. He seldom flinched from using a Preventive Detention Act that allowed him to lock up his opponents virtually at will. Relations with Zanzibar, which had united with Tanganyika in 1964 to form the United Republic of Tanzania with Nyerere as president, were always strained. Tanzania became ever more dependent upon foreign aid, and decision-making was paralysed by a ponderous bureaucracy. Nyerere was to admit that mistakes had been made, while his devotees pointed to developments - such as the spread of literacy and primary healthcare.

A practising Catholic in a predominantly Muslim country, Nyerere married Maria Magige in 1953, by whom he had five sons and two daughters. He maintained a passionate interest in Swahili, the language of East Africa, and translated Julius Caesar and The Merchant Of Venice. His political writings included Essays On Socialism (1969) and Freedom And Development (1973). The idea that when he resigned as president, handing over to Hassan Ali Mwinyi, Nyerere would live quietly on his farm at Batiama, cultivating his interest in book-binding, was always improbable. And indeed he continued to influence government policy through his chairmanship of the single ruling party, Chama Cha Mapinduzi. Whether or not he initiated the debate about an alternative political system in Tanzania is questionable, but he rapidly became a part of it. Although mwalimu , or teacher, as he liked to be known, was to his own people one of them, he nonetheless became - like Senghor, of Senegal, and Sadat, of Egypt - an African leader who outgrew his country.

When he relinquished the party chairmanship in 1990, he was able to devote more time to campaigning for greater co-operation between developing countries, and, as chairman of the South Commission, a closing of the gap between rich and poor. He also took on the role of African elder statesman, working notably in conflict resolution, although his most recent efforts - trying to resolve Burundi's civil war - did not bear fruit. Julius Nyerere belonged to a generation of African post-independence leaders, like Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah and Zambia's Kenneth Kaunda, who had an unshakeable belief in their mission to lead their countries to a better world through their chosen political ideologies, but who were unable to recognise their personal failings. When he stepped down, Nyerere declared that "although socialism has failed in Tanzania, I will remain a socialist because I believe socialism is the best policy for poor countries like Tanzania". His suc cessors decided otherwise, embracing capitalism and the free market, but with arguable benefits to the country. His detractors would regard his stewardship of Tanzania to have been flawed by his single-minded adherence to a manifestly unworkable policy.

Yet Nyerere is more likely to be remembered for having provided a moral leadership to Tanzania, and indeed Africa, when the continent was taking its first shaky steps after independence. Julian Marshall Ahmed Rajab, editor of Africa Analysis, writes: Julius Nyerere was "a great leader who made great mistakes," as one ruler once famously said of another. He unified his country, certainly, gave it a sense of purpose and, in the 1960s and 1970s, made Tanzanians feel proud of themselves. As a pan-Africanist, he could not be faulted for putting his country in the forefront of the frontline states against white minority rule in Africa. He took a principled stand at a great cost to his country, but his people never really minded. Tanzania became a home for exiled freedom-fighters who are now the rulers in a number of southern African states. Many a time, Nyerere confounded those of us who thought of ourselves as being to his left by appropriating our political lexicon and social agenda.

He never quite became a Marxist, but the former shepherd boy, whom we used to deride as "a good boy of the west" and who was viewed with suspicion by the likes of Kwame Nkrumah, turned into a tactical ally when he started talking about class struggle and a classless society. But his African socialist philosophy of ujamaa only brought misery and economic degradation. Under the man who preached self-reliance, Tanzania depended on foreign aid more than any other African country. That was only one of his contradictions. His vision of a united Africa did not stop him from recognising Biafra, the breakaway eastern Nigeria, in the early 1960s. A pious Catholic, who could not tolerate the excesses of Idi Amin, Nyerere nonetheless felt himself unable to move against another dictator much closer to home: the burly Sheikh Abeid Karume, Zanzibar's then president and Tanzania's first vice-president, who presided over a brutal dictatorship, detained people without trial, killed countless imagined or real enemies, and forced girls of Persian or Arab origin to marry elderly black Zanzibaris.

Karume was assassinated in 1972 but, throughout the sheikh's eight-year rule, Nyerere never lifted a finger against his tragic histrionics. Despite his failings, Nyerere was revered by progressive Africans. When they talked of Tanzania, they talked, in effect, of Nyerere - the simple, unassuming former schoolteacher, untainted by corruption or personal scandals and with a fondness for Mateus rosé. In the 1950s and 1960s, admirers would copy his hairstyle, his moustache, and later, when he started donning a kofia , the Swahili-Muslim cap, his fellow up-country Christians did likewise. In the mid-1960s he went to China, shook hands with Chairman Mao, and came back with a variant of the Mao suit, which became de rigueur among Tanzania's officials and aspiring politicians. H ad he not been a politician, Nyerere might have become a scholar of repute. He was a poet of modest pretensions and, although his translation of Julius Caesar was not brilliant, he did, after all, dare to translate Shakespeare.

He could be profound and esoteric to the intellectuals; streetwise to the masses. His speeches were electrifying. I remember spending the best part of two hours with him alone in a Nairobi hotel room in 1994, when he was out of office and Tanzania was about to embark on its first multi-party elections. Initially, he refused to discuss the prospective presidential candidates of his own party, the Chama Cha Mapinduzi. But once he had been assured that it was strictly off-the-record, he became candid, almost gossipy, about a number of party leaders.

Earlier in the day, when I offered to bring him tea during a conference break, he turned me down, saying: "Let me do it myself; it is at times like these that I can act as a normal human being." Julius Kambarage Nyerere, politician, born 1922; died October 14 1999 Biography of Tanzanian Leader Julius Kambarage Nyerere African History Glossary Julius Kambarage Nyerere was one of Africa's leading independence heroes (and a leading light behind the creation of the Organization of African Unity), the architect of ujamaa (an African socialist philosophy which revolutionized Tanzania's agricultural system), the prime minister of an independent Tanganyika, and the first president of Tanzania. Date of Birth: March 1922, Butiama, Tanganyika Date of death: 14 October 1999, London, UK An Early Life Kambarage ("the spirit which gives rain") Nyerere was born to Chief Burito Nyerere of the Zanaki (a small ethnic group in northern Tanganyika) and and his fifth (out of 22) wife Mgaya Wanyang'ombe.

Nyerere attended a local primary mission school, transferring in 1937 to Tabora Secondary School, a Roman Catholic mission and one of the few secondary schools open to Africans at that time. continue reading below our video What are the Seven Wonders of the World He was baptized a catholic on 23 December 1943, and took the baptismal name Julius. Nationalistic Awareness Between 1943 and 1945 Nyererre attended Makerere University, in Uganda's capital Kampala, obtaining a teaching certificate. It was around this time that he took his first steps towards a political career -- in 1945 he formed Tanganyika's first student group, an offshoot of the African Association, AA, (a pan-African group first formed by Tanganyika's educated elite in Dar es Salaam , in 1929). Nyerere and his colleagues began the process of converting the AA towards a nationalistic political group. Once he had gained his teaching certificate, Nyerere returned to Tanganyika to take up a teaching post at Saint Mary's, a Catholic mission school in Tabora.

He opened a local branch of the AA, and was instrumental in converting the AA from its pan-African idealism to the pursuit of Tanganyikan independence. To this end, the AA restyled itself in 1948 as the Tanganyika African Association, TAA. Gaining a Wider Perspective In 1949 Nyerere left Tanganyika to study for an MA in economics and history at the University of Edinburgh. He was the first African from Tanganyika to study at a British university and, in 1952, was the first Tanganyikan to gain a degree. At Edinburgh Nyerere became involved with the Fabian Colonial Bureau (a non-Marxist, anti-colonial socialist movement based in London). He watched intently Ghana's path to self-government, and was aware of the debates in Britain on the development of a Central African Federation (to be formed from a union of North and South Rhodesia and Nyasaland). Three years of study in the UK gave Nyerere an opportunity to vastly widen his perspective of pan-African issues. Graduating in 1952, he returned to teach at a Catholic school near Dar es Salaam.

On 24 January he married primary school teacher Maria Gabriel Majige. Developing the Independence Struggle in Tanganyika This was a period of upheaval in west and south Africa -- in neighboring Kenya the Mau Mau uprising was fighting against white settler rule, and nationalistic reaction was rising against the creation of the Central African Federation. But political awareness in Tanganyika was nowhere near as advanced as with its neighbors. Nyerere, who had become president of the TAA in April 1953, realized that a focus for African nationalism amongst the population was needed. To that end, in July 1954, Nyerere converted the TAA into Tanganyika's first political party -- the Tanganyikan African National Union, or TANU. Nyerere was careful to promote nationalistic ideals without encouraging the kind of violence that was erupting in Kenya under the Mau Mau uprising. TANU manifesto was for independence on the basis of non-violent, multi-ethnic politics, and the promotion of social and political harmony. Nyerere was appointed to Tanganyika's Legislative Council (the Legco) in 1954.

He gave up teaching the following year to pursue his career in politics. International Statesman Nyerere testified on behalf of TANU to the UN Trusteeship Council (committee on trusts and non-self-governing territories), in both 1955 and 1956. He presented the case for setting a timetable for Tanganyikan independence (this being one of the specified aims set down for a UN trust territory). The publicity he gained back in Tanganyika established him as the country's leading nationalist. In 1957 he resigned from the Tanganyikan Legislative Council in protest over the slow progress independence. TANU contested the 1958 elections, winning 28 of 30 elected positions in the Legco. This was countered, however, by 34 posts which were appointed by the British authorities -- there was no way for TANU to gain a majority.

But TANU was making headway, and Nyerere told his people that "Independence will follow as surely as the tickbirds follow the rhino." Finally with the election in August 1960, after changes to the Legislative Assembly were passed, TANU gained the majority it sought -- 70 out of 71 seats. Nyerere became chief minister on 2 September 1960 and Tanganyika gained limited self-government. Independence In May 1961 Nyerere became prime minister, and on 9 December Tanganyika gained its independence. On 22 January 1962, Nyerere resigned from the premiership to concentrate on drawing up a republican constitution and to prepare TANU for government rather than liberation. On 9 December 1962 Nyerere was elected president of the new Republic of Tanganyika. Nyerere's Approach to Government #1 Nyerere approached his presidency with a particularly African stance. First he attempted to integrate into African politics the traditional style of African decision making (what is known as "indaba in Southern Africa). Consensus is gained through a series of meetings in which everyone has an opportunity to say their piece.

To help build national unity he adopted Kiswahili as the national language, making it the only medium of instruction and education. Tanganyika became on of the few African countries with an indigenous official national language. Nyerere also expressed a fear that multiple parties, as seen in Europe and the US, would lead to ethnic conflict in Tanganyika. Prev Julius Nyerere of Tanzania Dies; Preached African Socialism to the World Julius Nyerere of Tanzania Dies; Preached African Socialism to the World By MICHAEL T. KAUFMAN ulius K. Nyerere, the founding father of Tanzania who used East Africa as a pulpit from which to spread his socialist philosophy worldwide, died Thursday in London. He was about 77 and was being treated for leukemia, and he suffered a major stroke last week. An uncharacteristically humble and modest national leader whose preferred honorific was Mwalimu, the Swahili word for teacher, Nyerere led his country into independence and guided it for nearly three decades.

Idealistic, principled, and some would say naïvely misguided, Nyerere became one of the most prominent of the first generation of politicians to head newly independent African states as colonialism ebbed, playing a leading role in the debate over economic inequalities between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. When he guided what had been the British Trust Territory of Tanganyika into sovereignty in 1961, he was the youngest of the continent's triumphant nationalists, a group that included Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia and Félix Houphouët-Boigny of Ivory Coast. When he stepped down as President 24 years later, he was only the third modern African leader to relinquish power voluntarily on a continent that by then included 50 independent states. He went neither to jail nor into exile, but to a farm in Butiama, his home village, near the shore of Lake Victoria.

Nyerere ascended to power without a single shot being fired, becoming Prime Minister and then President of a land that at the time contained nine million people affiliated with more than 120 tribes, stretching from Lake Victoria and Lake Tanganyika down to the Indian Ocean. It was one of the poorest countries in the world. Its mostly illiterate citizens were scattered over remote regions, often unable to find a common language, although they shared ample rigors as they wrested a meager subsistence from the soil or the sea. Early Progress, Enduring Debate By the time Nyerere gave up the last vestiges of political power in 1990, when he retired as chairman of the single political party, Tanzania had undergone staggering, often traumatic, changes. The population had doubled, to more than 20 million. It had merged with Zanzibar in 1964. Almost 70 percent of the people had been prodded to move from traditional lands into paternalistically planned villages -- ujamma -- in what became Africa's largest and most debated example of social engineering. After vast investment in education, literacy rose phenomenally, and 83 percent of Tanzanians were able to read and write.

Nyerere also succeeded in promoting Swahili so that it superseded dozens of tribal tongues to become a true national language. Some Western countries, notably the Scandinavians, were so impressed that they provided billions of dollars, making Tanzania one of the 10 largest recipients of foreign aid per capita. But it was still one of the poorest countries in the world. The year he left his party post, the World Bank reported that Tanzanians were surviving on a per-capita income of $200 a year, and that the economy had shrunk on average half a percentage point a year between 1965 and 1988. The debate over Nyerere's leadership extended beyond his tenure, with academics, politicians and development strategists often dividing sharply over his legacy. His domestic and international defenders, generally people of the left, praised his emphasis on social investments and his egalitarian economic policies, crediting them with creating a culturally cohesive nation that avoided ethnic conflict while life expectancy, literacy and access to water increased. His Tanzanian supporters took pride in Nyerere's reputation as one of the most prominent proponents of a new economic order that would benefit the developing south in economic relations with the industrial north.

Nyerere also gained international prestige for his principled support of the struggles for majority rule in South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Angola, and for Tanzania's military counter offensive against Idi Amin of Uganda, which routed the dictator and sent him into exile. The third world honored him, and he won the respect of such Western leaders as Olof Palme, Pierre Trudeau, Willy Brandt and Jimmy Carter. Still, his critics, who included free-market liberals and conservatives, condemned him for adopting paternalistic and coercive policies like ujamma. They deplored his insistence on one-party rule and price controls, which they said stultified Tanzania's economy, shrank agricultural production, encouraged corruption and led to vast squandering of foreign aid. From a Modest Home to a Master's Degree The distance Nyerere traveled from his birth to political power and to the center of an international polemic on development was enormous, spanning ages as well as years. He was born into the Zanaki people, a small tribe of 40,000 in the hills southeast of Lake Victoria. His mother, Mugaya, was 15 years old.

She had been the fifth wife of Burito Nyerere (pronounced nyuh-RARE-ee), a village headman, who was 61 years old when the boy was born. Later, as the village chief prospered, he took more wives, and when he died at 81, he had 22 wives and 26 surviving children. Mugaya's son was named Kambarage, for a rain spirit, for it had rained on the day of his birth (though the year is uncertain, 1922 or '23). Years later, after he attended mission schools, he became a Roman Catholic and chose Julius as his baptismal name. He lived the life of a Zanaki child, weeding his mother's garden and going off on bow-and-arrow hunts with the older men. But all that changed when the village chief, with some reluctance, agreed to send his child to board at a school at Musoma, 30 miles from his home.

Quickly, as he learned Swahili and English, he was spotted as an exceedingly bright child by the White Fathers, the priests who ran the school, and in 1936 he placed first in the entire territory on an entrance exam for a school in Tabora. At the school, which was patterned on private schools in Britain, a native elite was to be trained to help administer their homeland under British rule. He spent six years at Tabora, in central northwestern Tanganyika, graduating in 1943. He went on to Makerere University in Uganda, and after being baptized and teaching for two years in a church school, he won a scholarship to Edinburgh University, where he earned a master's degree in history and economics. Soon after he went away to school, his father paid a lobola, or bride price, to the family of a girl from his home area as a traditional deposit on a future marriage. But at Makerere, Nyerere met a Christian girl named Maria Magige.

In 1948 he asked her to marry him, and when she agreed, the six cows that his father had given to the family of the prospective child bride were returned to the Nyerere family and were passed on to Maria's parents. Maria Magige Nyerere bore him five sons and a daughter. Mrs. Nyerere and the six children were in London when he died, Reuters reported. A state funeral is expected to be held in Dar es Salaam next week before Nyerere is buried in Butiama, his home village, in northern Tanzania. Mrs. Nyerere was the head of the country's major women's organization, the United Women of Tanzania, and she ran a poultry business for some years while her husband was President. But she gave it up when Nyerere imposed a leadership code that forbade government officials from involvement in a private business in order to discourage corruption. New Teacher Offers a Socialist Lesson On his return from Scotland, Nyerere worked as a teacher in a government school. He also won election as president of the Tanganyika African Association, an elite social organization that he quickly transformed into a political party that later led the struggle for independence.

That new group, the Tanganyika African National Union, was formed on July 7, 1954, a date now celebrated as a national holiday known as Saba Saba, the seventh day of the seventh month. When Tanganyika became independent on Dec. 9, 1961, Nyerere became its first Prime Minister, but six weeks later he suddenly resigned. He remained president of his party, Tanu, and spent nine months traveling throughout the country, meeting ordinary people and preparing a document that he issued under the title "Ujamma -- The Basis of African Socialism." This was the first of two defining proclamations by which Nyerere sought to blend the major influences of his life: the cooperative forces he had observed in tribal life, with their emphasis on a constant search for consensus; the ideal of a Christian brotherhood, to which he had been exposed at school, and the goals of welfare-state socialism that he had absorbed from British Labor Party teachings while he lived in an Edinburgh housing project. In "Ujamma" he declared: "In acquisitive societies, wealth tends to corrupt those who possess it.

It tends to breed in them a desire to live more comfortably than their fellows, to dress better and in every way to outdo them." He then depicted traditional African society as providing sustenance to all members of a community. He wrote that in contrast to Europe, where socialism had arisen in opposition to capitalism, Africa had never known either class division or class struggle. He then concluded: "Ujamma, or 'familyhood,' describes our socialism. It is opposed to capitalism, which seeks to build a happy society on the basis of the exploitation of man by man, and is equally opposed to doctrinaire socialism, which seeks to build its happy society on the philosophy of inevitable conflict between man and man." Habits of Modesty and Strict Ethics On the first anniversary of independence, Tanganyika became a republic. Portraying ujamma as the national goal, Nyerere was easily elected President. One element of his position paper that he adopted quickly and adhered to for the rest of his public life was his disavowal of pomp and perquisites. He never received more than $8,000 a year as President.

A slight man, standing 5 foot 6 and weighing 125 pounds, he appeared both abroad and at home wearing a gray or black safari shirt over his trousers and a white crocheted skullcap of the sort worn on Zanzibar. In contrast to many African leaders, who often raced through their capitals in motorcades with phalanxes of motorcycle outriders, he moved around Dar es Salaam in an old car with just his driver, who stopped for red lights. In his spare time he had translated "Romeo and Juliet" and "Julius Caesar" into Swahili. The second of Nyerere's proclamations was delivered in 1967 and came to be known as the Arusha Declaration, after the northern town where Nyerere read it to party leaders. It called for a commitment to self-reliance and established the leadership code, which obligated government and party officials to give up all sources of income but their salaries. But the most most important provisions established rural development as the country's chief priority.

In the following months, in town and village meetings, Nyerere expounded on this, calling upon peasant farmers to voluntarily relocate and pool their labors in collectively harvesting common fields. As he repeatedly explained, Tanzanians were too scattered for services to be brought to them. Only if they gathered in villages would they be able to benefit from schools, clinics, libraries. Befitting the teacher he was, he often resorted to didactic slogans, which party stalwarts were quick to paint all over the country. Decades later the fading mottos can still be read on public buildings or small village shops: "Work Is the Foundation of Progress." "A Poor Country Cannot Rule Itself if It Relies on Foreign Help." "We Must Run While Others Walk." All too often, the slogans faded in an atmosphere of lassitude. Seven years after the Arusha Declaration, only some 1,000 ujamma villages had been established and only 2 million of Tanzania's then 14 million people were living in them. Virtually none involved successful collective farming.

A Rocky Descent Into Economic Gloom Nyerere displayed growing impatience, and in December 1973 he addressed his people on the radio in a scolding tone. He said that while the Government had abolished poll taxes, ended school fees and extended water supplies and health clinics in rural areas, the people had done almost nothing in return. While the Government could not turn people into socialists by force, he said, it could insure that everybody lived in a village, and he wanted the entire country to be living in planned settlements by 1976. What followed were campaigns of persuasion, intimidation and coercion. People were told that famine relief would be provided only to those who moved peacefully. Because transport was provided by militias and the army, party stalwarts told peasants that if they did not pull down their houses and load them on government trucks, the houses would be demolished. Many homes were burned, and there were a few cases in which people were killed.

Nyerere deplored the violence, attributing it to overly zealous local officials, but he insisted that such mistakes should not obscure the success of a program that, he said, had led more than 13 million people to move into ujamma communities by 1976, a movement of close to 70 percent of the population in three years. The evaluations of more detached observers were far less enthusiastic. James C. Scott, a Yale agronomist, studied the Tanzanian experience for a book titled "Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed" (Yale University, 1998). Scott noted that in contrast to Soviet collectivization, the Tanzanian campaign was not conceived as an all-out war of appropriation. He wrote: "The disruptions and inhumanities of Nyerere's program, however serious for its victims, were not in the same league as those inflicted by Stalin. Even so, the ujamma campaign was coercive and occasionally violent. It proved, moreover, a failure, ecologically as well as economically." With people moved from their traditional fields, food production plummeted.

Moreover, according to outside scholars, 60 percent of the new villages were on semiarid land unsuitable for long-term cultivation. Attempts were made to dictate the growing of certain crops, notably fire-cured tobacco, to be sold at what villagers saw as confiscatory prices set by government agencies. Peasants resisted this, and they also ignored annual work plans and production targets. With people having left their old cashew trees behind, a huge share of that once-important crop went ungathered. Scott concluded that the failure of ujamma was virtually guaranteed "by the high modernist hubris of planners and specialists who believed that they alone knew how to organize a more satisfactory, rational and productive life for their citizens." "It should be noted," he continued, "that they did have something to contribute to what could have been a more fruitful development of the Tanzanian countryside.

But their insistence that they had a monopoly on useful knowledge and that they impose this knowledge set the stage for disaster." Finger-Pointing Taints Search for Aid In Dar es Salaam in the late 70's, tales of such willful and miscalculated planning were widely exchanged by the same diplomats who complimented Nyerere for his concern and decency: After a state agency was organized to market fish, fish disappeared from the market because fisherman no longer found it worth their while to go out. Norwegian-backed training project to establish coastal shipping was not permitted to carry cargo so it would not compete with the state trucking company. regulation banning doctors from treating patients privately in their homes after their work in government clinics and hospitals led to the emigration of many doctors. An Italian agronomist developing export crops promoted strawberries, for which there was a strong market in Europe, but a party official declared that unlike beets and potatoes, strawberries were not a socialist fruit. Over the years Nyerere would sometimes acknowledge that Government mismanagement, particularly its abolishment of functioning producer cooperatives, had contributed to sharp declines in staple crops.

But he placed much more blame on an international economy in which agricultural prices had dropped sharply while the cost of oil, machinery and other imports had risen. He noted that for Tanzania to purchase a seven-ton truck in 1981, it had to produce four times as much cotton, or three times as much coffee, or 10 times as much tobacco as it had five years earlier. But whatever the accuracy of those calculations, it was also true that farm production was tumbling, with sisal harvesting, for example, dropping to 33,000 tons in 1985 from 250,000 in 1964. Desperately needing credit, Nyerere turned to the International Monetary Fund and in 1980 began a five-year struggle with the fund, resisting its dictates that he divert funds from education and emphasize export crops while allowing domestic food prices to rise. In this skirmishing, Nyerere became the third world's most assertive exponent of the new economic order in which the economic imbalance between North and South would be overcome through international law and obligation rather than through markets or charity.

But he was never able to reach an agreement with the I.M.F., and in 1984, when Tanzania could not meet interest payments to the United States, the Reagan Administration suspended all aid but emergency food allocations. Nyerere reinforced his reputation abroad by his steadfast support of liberation movements in African countries where majority rule had not been achieved. He provided training camps for the African National Congress from South Africa and diplomatic support for national movements fighting in Mozambique and Rhodesia. And in 1978, after Uganda annexed a 700-square-mile section of Tanzania, Nyerere angrily denounced Idi Amin, the Ugandan despot, as a man who had killed more people than either Ian Smith, the white leader of Rhodesia, or John Vorster of South Africa. With startling bluntness, he added: "There is this tendency in Africa to think that it does not matter if an African kills other Africans. Had Amin been white, free Africa would have passed many resolutions condemning him.

Being black is becoming a certificate to kill fellow Africans." Nyerere, who as a youthful pan-Africanist President had considered doing without an army, reasoning that such a force would be useless against great powers and therefore could only fight African neighbors, sent Tanzanian soldiers and Ugandan exile volunteers to push back Amin's forces. They routed the Ugandan dictator, who fled into exile in Saudi Arabia. After he retired, Nyerere was often asked whether he had any regrets. In a typical interview, he said he was pleased that "Tanzanians have more sense of national identity than many other Africans," and he expressed pride in the nation's high rate of literacy. As for the poor economy, it had resulted from an "a hostile international environment," he said. "What would I have changed if I had my time again? Not much." The white-haired farmer, the Mwalimu, then turned to his attempts to instill his idea of African socialism. "They keep saying you've failed," he mused. "But what is wrong with urging people to pull together?

Did Christianity fail because the world isn't all Christian?" Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company BBC News | Africa | Julius Nyerere: The conscience of Africa Thursday, October 14, 1999 Published at 09:08 GMT 10:08 UK World: Africa Julius Nyerere: The conscience of Africa Julius Nyerere: A vision of self-reliance for Africa The BBC's James Robbins on the life of Julius Nyerere Dr Julius Nyerere, who has died aged 77, led the former British protectorate of Tanganyika to independence in 1961, becoming its first prime Minister and later its first president. His country was withdrawn from British rule without violence and with comparatively little racial bitterness. Dr Nyerere acquired in the process the reputation of being a moderate, an idea that was encouraged by his personal modesty and his preference for Western values. Independence Day, 1961 In both Africa and the West his prestige, when he first became President, stood high.

It was seriously shaken, however, early in 1964, by a mutiny of the Tanganyikan Army that spread to other parts of East Africa and was only put down with British help. Later, as President of Tanzania, formed by the joining of Tanganyika and Zanzibar, Nyerere instituted a one-party system, together with other forms of government that smacked of a police state. Yet he always defended his position declaring that Tanzanians had far more freedom under his rule than they had ever had under the British, and that the one-party system was vital for stability. Nyerere embraced Mao and his theory of collective farming Over the years, he became increasingly anti-British and anti-European, and entered into close relations with Beijing. He accepted large numbers of Chinese military instructors and technicians, a development that angered the United States, which cut off aid. President Nyerere was outspoken in his criticism of British Prime Minister Harold Wilson's government for not taking military action against the Ian Smith regime in Rhodesia when it issued its unilateral declaration of independence in 1965.

Nyerere urged Harold Wilson to send troops into Rhodesia In common with other African leaders, he was greatly concerned about the possibility of the UK resuming limited arms sales to South Africa. Nevertheless, by November 1975 he came to London and was accorded the full honours of a state visit. He was then the longest serving head of a Commonwealth African state, and the UK government regarded him as a major stabilising force in an increasingly turbulent region. As the crisis over Rhodesia worsened in the late 1970s, President Nyerere played a campaigning role in moves by the so-called frontline states - Tanzania, Zambia, Botswana, Mozambique and Angola - to hasten majority rule. His agricultural ideas proved disastrous He also came to have an important influence with the nationalist guerrilla groups in what was to become Zimbabwe, and was a key figure in the formulation of the peace plan that was concluded at the Lancaster House conference in London in 1979. It was in that year that Tanzanian forces invaded Uganda forcing an end to the murderous regime of Idi Amin. In Tanzania itself, President Nyerere attempted to achieve his goal of a socialist and self-supporting state.

In 1967 this policy of self-reliance had been enshrined in the Arusha Declaration (named after the northern Tanzanian town where it was announced). It came to be regarded as one of the most important political documents to have emerged in the developing world. Nyerere was respected for his idealism Yet his policy of "ujama", community-based farming collectives, proved disastrous. The idealism of the grand project was overwhelmed by the lack of individual incentive. Ten years later, taking stock, President Nyerere issued a remarkably honest booklet which gave as much prominence to the failures as well as the successes. "There is a time for planting and a time for harvesting", he wrote. "For us it is still a time for planting". It was his abject failure at home that will blight the reputation of a man who had gained respect as one of the few African leaders of his time who stood for idealism and principle.

Julius Nyerere | Géopolitique Africaine President of Tanzania from the country's founding in 1961 until his retirement in 1985 Biographie de Nyerere Julius Julius Kambarage Nyerere (1922-1999) was President of Tanzania from the country's founding in 1961 until his retirement in 1985. Julius Kambarage Nyerere was born in Tanganyika on 13 April 1922. He received his higher education at Makerere University in Kampala and the University of Edinburgh. After he returned to Tanganyika, he worked as a teacher. In 1954, he helped form the Tanganyika African National Union. In 1961, Julius Nyerere was elected Tanganyika's first Prime Minister, and following independence, in 1962, the country's first President. In 1964, Tanganyika became politically united with Zanzibar and was renamed to Tanzania. In 1965, a one-party election returned Nyerere to power.

Two years later, he issued the Arusha Declaration, which outlined his socialist vision of Ujamaa that came to dominate his policies. Julius Nyerere retired in 1985, while remaining the chairman of the Chama Cha Mapinduzi. He died in London in 1999. In 2009, Julius Nyerere was named “World Hero of Social Justice” by the president of the United Nations General Assembly.

Question: Julius Nyerere was the first president of which African country?
Answer: Tanzania